In April 1970, my father went to Vietnam for his second tour in the Army Corps of Engineers. My siblings and I were just old enough to watch the war on TV, but most of the time the Vermont hills restricted the signal, so we remained blissfully ignorant of what was happening. My dad came home safely, or so we thought.

Forty-four years later, it is his daughter who is in Vietnam. Like my father I landed at the former Da Nang U.S. airbase, now a major commercial airport. And my visit is directly related to the war. It ended nearly 40 years ago, but it still affects my family and hundreds of thousands of American and Vietnamese families.

In April 1970, my father went to Vietnam for his second tour in the Army Corps of Engineers. My siblings and I were just old enough to watch the war on TV, but most of the time the Vermont hills restricted the signal, so we remained blissfully ignorant of what was happening. My dad came home safely, or so we thought.

Forty-four years later, it is his daughter who is heading back to Vietnam. Like my father I will land at the former Da Nang U.S. airbase, now a major commercial airport. And my visit is directly related to the war. It ended nearly 40 years ago, but it still affects my family and hundreds of thousands of American and Vietnamese families.

Peter Sills, an attorney who helped represent the Vietnam Veterans of America in a class action lawsuit regarding the use of Agent Orange, has written about it in a new book titled Toxic War. Speaking with VOA’s Jim Stevenson, Sills told of the many ways Agent Orange had a direct effect on people, and how it even evolved into a weapon.

From 1962 to 1971, US military sprayed herbicides over Vietnam to strip the thick jungle canopy that could conceal opposition forces, to destroy crops that those forces might depend on, and to clear tall grasses and bushes from the perimeters of US base camps and outlying fire-support bases. Because of continuing uncertainty about the long term health effects of the sprayed herbicides on Vietnam veterans, Congress passed the Agent Orange Act of 1991. The legislation directed the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to request the IOM to perform a comprehensive evaluation of scientific and medical information regarding the health effects of exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used in Vietnam. Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2012 is the ninth congressionally mandated biennial update.

The committee reviewed all relevant literature published between October 2010 and September 2011 and integrated the new findings with the previously assembled epidemiological data on each health outcome assessed with respect to exposure to the chemicals constituting the herbicides used in Vietnam, including the dioxin contaminant 2,3,7,8-TCDD. The single new conclusion was that there is limited or suggestive evidence of a scientifically meaningful association of stroke with exposure to the chemicals in question.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has reversed its denial of Agent Orange-related disability benefits for an Air Force veteran who flew on potentially contaminated C-123 aircraft after the Vietnam War, a decision advocates describe as the first of its kind for veterans seeking compensation for postwar exposure to the toxic defoliant.

Paul Bailey, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who is gravely ill with cancer, received notice Monday that he would receive “a total grant of benefits” for cancer associated with his 1970s-era service in the United States aboard the aircraft, which had been used to spray the toxic defoliant during the war.

Dioxin spike raises fears of local health risks

The recent discovery of 22 barrels buried on former U.S. military land in the city of Okinawa could be posing the same level of risks to local residents as dioxin hot spots in Vietnam where the American military stored toxic defoliants during the 1960s and 1970s, according to two leading Agent Orange specialists.

Nearly three dozen rugged C-123 transport planes formed the backbone of the U.S. military’s campaign to spray Agent Orange over jungles hiding enemy soldiers during the Vietnam War. And many of the troops who served in the conflict have been compensated for diseases associated with their exposure to the toxic defoliant.

But after the war, some of the planes were used on cargo missions in the United States. Now a bitter fight has sprung up over whether those in the military who worked, ate and slept in the planes after the war should also be compensated. Two U.S. senators are now questioning the Department of Veterans Affairs’ assertions that any postwar contamination on the planes was not high enough to be linked to disease.

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Japan’s Ministry of Defense says it has detected components of Agent Orange in old barrels unearthed on land that was once part of Kadena Air Base.

Soil and water testing found dioxin and another harmful components of the notorious U.S. military defoliant around about two dozen rusted containers — some marked with Dow Chemical Co.’s logo — that were discovered by Japanese crews digging at what is now a local soccer field in Okinawa City.

Dow was one of the manufacturers of dioxin-laden herbicides that were used to strip away jungle cover for enemy combatants during the Vietnam War and later linked to severe illnesses and birth defects.

The Okinawa Defense Bureau of the Ministry of Defense said the testing proves the barrels contained some type of herbicide, but the bureau stopped short of saying it was Agent Orange because only two of three chemical markers of the defoliant were found at the site. The drums appeared to have been buried empty, meaning it is likely the contents had been used, according to the bureau.

By Drew Brown

McClatchy Foreign Staff

DA NANG, Vietnam -- James R. Clary was a young Air Force officer and scientist who designed the spray tank for the C-123 cargo planes that dispensed Agent Orange and other herbicides during the Vietnam War.

Thirteen years after the conflict ended, with serious concerns being raised in Congress about the effects of defoliants on veterans’ health, Clary dropped a startling bombshell: Military scientists had known that herbicides shipped to Vietnam were contaminated with dioxin and had “the potential for damage” to human health.

“However, because the material was to be used on the ‘enemy,’ none of us were overly concerned,” Clary wrote to then-Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D. “We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide.”

This week, President Truong Tan Sang of Vietnam will be visiting Washington as only the second Vietnamese head-of-state to visit the US since 1995, when the two countries normalized relations. Over the last 18 years trade has burgeoned between the two countries. The US is now Vietnam's largest export market. American companies have invested over $240 billion in Vietnam, which by one standard makes the US the single largest source of foreign direct investment. Trade therefore is at the top of the agenda when President Sang meets President Obama this Thursday. Vietnam is expected to be an early member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) -- the Obama Administration's main instrument for promoting economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region. Vietnam and the US are also discussing a more comprehensive upgrading of the relationship through a strategic partnership agreement.

President Sang's visit and meeting with President Obama will also be an important opportunity to celebrate the remarkable progress made in addressing the legacy of Agent Orange -- a defoliant used by the US during the Vietnam War to destroy vegetation and food sources used by opposing forces.

By Drew Brown

McClatchy Foreign Staff

DA NANG, Vietnam -- In many ways, Nguyen Thi Ly is just like any other 12-year-old girl. She has a lovely smile and is quick to laugh. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up. She enjoys skipping rope when she plays.

But Ly is also very different from other children. Her head is severely misshapen. Her eyes are unnaturally far apart and permanently askew. She’s been hospitalized with numerous ailments since her birth.

Her mother, 43-year-old Le Thi Thu, has similar deformities and health disorders. Neither of them has ever set foot on a battlefield, but they’re both casualties of war.

Le and her daughter are second- and third-generation victims of dioxin exposure, the result of the U.S. military’s use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. Air Force sprayed more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides over parts of southern Vietnam and along the borders of neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The herbicides were contaminated with dioxin, a deadly compound that remains toxic for decades and causes birth defects, cancer and other illnesses.

By Drew Brown

McClatchy Foreign Staff

DA NANG, Vietnam -- Dang Chi Trung and his sister, Dang Chi Tam, live down a narrow alley in a small house that once belonged to their parents.

The son and daughter of two lifelong Communist Party members who fought against the French in the 1950s and the Americans a decade later, they live on a government allowance of about $60 a month.

Both parents are deceased, leaving Dang Chi Trung, 44, to care for his sister, who’s 43. She’s mentally disabled because of her parents’ exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. She is completely dependent on her brother.

“Even personal hygiene, she doesn’t know how to do,” he said. “Even to go to the toilet.”

Despite the government’s help, theirs is a precarious existence. Dang Chi Trung has never married. Having to care for his sister means that he cannot work, either.

Vietnam has some of the highest rates of child disability in the world, but experts say it is not equipped to provide adequate care.

HANOI: The six-day-old baby with excessive fluid in the brain was left outside an orphanage in Hanoi - just one of thousands of disabled children to have been abandoned in Vietnam.

The country of 89 million has some of the highest rates of child disability in the world - the legacy of decades of war, including use of defoliant Agent Orange - but experts say it is not equipped to provide adequate care.

DA NANG, Viet Nam, 30 May 2013 – For children at the Da Nang Association for Victims of Agent Orange, the end of a daily two-hour journey has turned into the beginning of a new life: doing things they have never done before.

A year ago, most of these children were forgotten or neglected, seen as a burden by their families. Once known for what they couldn’t do, now they are slowly becoming known for what they can do.

Nearly 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, its youngest victims are still in their infancy. Across the country, some babies are still being born with defects as a result of their parents’ exposure to dioxin found in in the crop-killing herbicide Agent Orange.

A health plan's leader lost her husband, possibly to aftereffects of Agent Orange exposure. Now she seeks to help others in Vietnam.

Bob and Nancy Feldman met at an ice-skating party in Green Bay when they were 15 and became high school sweethearts.

They married at a time when opposition to the Vietnam War was hitting full stride in America -- and in their own lives. They talked of moving to Canada when Bob's draft card came, but he ultimately headed off to an air base near Saigon.

Decades later, after the legacy of the Vietnam War cut their love story bitterly short, Nancy Feldman looked to Southeast Asia as an unlikely salve. She established a small charity to help Vietnamese families still facing insidious effects of exposure to Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide that doctors said likely was linked to Bob's death from cancer at age 59.

On Thursday, the US and Vietnam start cleaning up dioxin from Agent Orange. This reconciliation, 37 years after the war, may set a precedent in the ethics of dealing with the aftereffects of war.

For the first time since the end of the Vietnam War, the United States will start to clean up the herbicide Agent Orange used to defoliate forests during that guerrilla conflict.

The cleanup, which begins Thursday at the former US military base of Da Nang, is a step forward in the ethics of modern warfare. It sets a precedent for how former foes can reconcile by taking responsibility for a war’s aftereffects on health and the environment.

Although Washington remains a vocal critic of Vietnam’s human rights record, it also views the country as a key ally in its push to re-engage militarily in the Asia-Pacific region. The U.S. says maintaining peace and freedom of navigation in the sea is in its national interest.

The Agent Orange issue has continued to blight the U.S.-Vietnam relationship because dioxin can linger in soils and at the bottom of lakes and rivers for generations, entering the food supply through the fat of fish and other animals.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Defense and the U.S. now plan to excavate 73,000 cubic meters (2.5 million cubic feet) of soil from the airport and heat it to a high temperature in storage tanks until the dioxin is removed. The project is expected to be completed in four years.

More than half a century after the United States began dousing Vietnam with the defoliant Agent Orange in a bid to clear the jungle that provided cover for Viet Cong fighters, it is about to begin cleaning up one of the most contaminated spots left over from the war.

The cleanup is expected to take four years and cost more than $43 million. It is the first time that the U.S. has joined with Vietnam to completely cleanse a site tainted with Agent Orange, which has been linked to birth defects, cancer and other ailments.

"This is huge, considering that for many years the U.S. and Vietnam could not see eye to eye at all about this issue," said Susan Hammond, director of the War Legacies Project, a Vermont-based nonprofit group. "It was one of the last unresolved war legacies between the U.S. and Vietnam."

Let's face it, we're devoting enormous amounts of time and energy to minimize our exposures to toxins (think BPA, pesticides, and all the rest of the seemingly ubiquitous chemicals). But now an emerging body of research points to the disturbing possibility that such self-protective strategies might sometimes come decades, or even a century, too late.

Recently uncovered documents show that the United States conducted top-secret tests of Agent Orange in Okinawa in 1962, according to a veterans services employee.

The experiments, believed to have taken place under the auspices of Project AGILE — a classified program to research unconventional warfare techniques — have also been confirmed by a former high-ranking American official.

HANOI, Vietnam — Michael Marceau didn’t leave Vietnam under the best of circumstances in May 1970.

Stationed about 30 miles from the Cambodia border in an infantry unit, he “zigged instead of zagged” during an early morning rocket attack and was hit by shrapnel. The metal entered his back, hit a lung, bounced off a rib and lodged in an artery and cluster of nerves in his left shoulder.

A buddy hoisted him into an idling jeep and saved him from bleeding to death. He was hospitalized two weeks, then spent months in rehab.

This month, Marceau, 63, came back to the country where he once served.

“I want to try to make a better exit this time,” Marceau joked as he strolled through the grounds around the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.

JACKSONVILLE, Florida — Thousands of barrels of Agent Orange were unloaded on Okinawa Island and stored at the port of Naha, and at the U.S. military's Kadena and Camp Schwab bases between 1965 and 1966, an American veteran who served in Okinawa claims.

In an interview in early April with The Japan Times and Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting Co., a TV network based in Okinawa, former infantryman Larry Carlson, 67, also said that Okinawan stevedores were exposed to the highly toxic herbicide as they labored in the holds of ships, and that he even saw it being sprayed at Kadena Air Base.

The Marines came ashore at Da Nang, on the central coast of Vietnam, on March 8, 1965. By the next year, the beachfront and the air base alongside had become a vast, ugly sprawl of tents, trucks, half-tracks, spare parts, fuel drums, helicopters, and airplanes. Old photographs depict a plain of expeditionary military engineering; the gravel-bedded, metal-roofed, fenced-in look anticipated eerily the American bases that today dot Afghanistan.

Mrs. Saw had a gravely voice that bugled commands in a grandmotherly way. “Sit down! she insisted. We obeyed, and she shoved steaming plates and bowls of homemade food our way—minced-meat salad, noodle soup, and fresh fish from the river. We ate at Mrs. Saw’s little wooden restaurant near the old Ho Chi Minh Trail most every day and night for nearly a week. And now I wonder: was her fish laced with dioxins? Was her meat safe to eat?

My husband, Jerry, and I knew US forces had sprayed that part of southern Laos with herbicides (mainly Agent Orange and its colorful cousins) during the Vietnam War. But we didn’t think so much about that spraying as we sat at Mrs. Saw’s table and downed her sticky rice with fish paste, chiles and fragrant herbs. We were in town researching unexploded ordnance (UXO) for our forthcoming book on the effects of the US bombings. We had our eyes peeled for live bombs—not poisoned foods.

As long as Agent Orange is not addressed, along with the reparations that the US agreed to offer the Vietnamese, the Indochina War cannot be considered over. Rather, it entered a different phase, a phase without artillery and gunshots, but a phase in which millions continue to suffer and die in agony.

During the ten years (1961-1971) of aerial chemical warfare in Vietnam, US warplanes sprayed more than 20 million gallons of herbicide defoliants in an operation code-named Ranch Hand. Agent Orange, the dioxin-contaminated and exceedingly toxic herbicide manufactured by a handful of chemical companies for the US Department of Defense, constituted about 61 percent of the total herbicides sprayed in the war.(1) The particular dioxin found in Agent Orange (TCDD) is the one of the most toxic environmental contaminants, found to cause cancer, birth defects and disruptions to the immune and endocrine systems.

More than 84,000 Vietnam veterans afflicted with heart disease, Parkinson’s disease or B-cell leukemia are drawing disability compensation today thanks to a decision by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki to expand the list of ailments presumed caused by exposure to herbicides, including Agent Orange, used during that war.

Vietnam’s Agent Orange campaign has made the US government start to act, by educating them on the environmental and social impacts in Vietnam, a Vietnamese professor and activist has said.

Professor Vo Quy, lecturer at Vietnam National University-Hanoi and one of the first members of the Vietnam-US Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin, said that dialogues between Vietnam and US activists made progress since 2007, when the group was established.

HA NOI — In the 50 years since US troops began spraying Agent Orange and other toxic chemicals onto Viet Nam's central and southern regions, millions continue to suffer from illness and disability due to the exposure.

(VOV) - A two-day conference opened in Hanoi on August 8 attended by ambassadors, embassy representatives and more than 100 international delegates from 25 countries.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, President of the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/ Dioxin (VAVA), senior lieutenant-general Nguyen Van Rinh, emphasized that the conference will have great significance for all the participants, particularly those who are working for peace and an end to war.

WAEGWAN, South Korea – A joint U.S.-South Korean investigation team announced Friday that it has found no evidence of Agent Orange in water or soil around Camp Carroll, though testing of the area will continue.

WASHINGTON -- Doug DeWitt served his country in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, but now he feels abandoned by the nation for which he fought.

Forty years after his service, the 67-year-old Anaheim, Calif., resident suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure and other ailments that he blames on exposure to Agent Orange, the main chemical the United States sprayed during the war. He has tried for years without success to get disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea -- The Joint Investigation Team established to investigate claims that Agent Orange was buried on Camp Carroll, South Korea, in 1978 has made significant progress since its formation last month.

It is notoriously difficult for veterans to get their disabilities connected to their military service - even when the connection is apparent. In this unique case, the Department of Veterans Affairs was made to concede a very important connection and gave justice to a struggling widow.

Barely 48 hours earlier, Heather Bowser raised her seat back to the upright position and braced to land in the home of her father's demons.

As the plane descended toward Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport, her anxiety soared. The 38-year-old Ohio native had been planning this trip for a long time, but now that she was nearly there, uncertainty was beginning to mute the buzz of her initial excitement.

Bill was discharged from the Army in the fall of 1971, and he and Sharon returned to Wintersville. Bill had grown up there, but it didn't feel like home anymore. Most of his high school friends, including several who had worked with him in the mill, had gone off to college, not to Vietnam. He quickly found he had little in common with them.

Heather's heart sank when she entered the gates of Friendship Village.

She had eagerly anticipated this visit. More than anything else on her travel agenda, she looked forward to meeting the many children whose parents were exposed to Agent Orange during the war, children like her. And she had heard a great deal about the Village, which was founded by an American Vietnam veteran like her father.

Thirty-five years after the war in Vietnam ended, the chemical Agent Orange still pervades the soil of the southeast Asian nation. In many places, the land remains scarred. None of America's former military bases has yet been cleaned up. Congress first allocated money to cleanup dioxin-contaminated land three years ago for a project at Da Nang airport in Central Vietnam.

During the Vietnam war, the US military sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange over South Vietnam to destroy enemy hiding places, often drenching American troops and their allies. South Vietnamese soldiers describe the spray likea fog that was still there when they went into the jungles with the American troops on patrol.

California is home to many Vietnamese-Americans who fought alongside the U.S. during the Vietnam war. Over time, these soldiers developed cancers because of their exposure to the chemical defoliant Agent Orange. But while American-born vets can get medical care and disability compensation for their Agent Orange-related illnesses, America's former allies get no such benefits.

World Focus correspondent Mark Litke and producer Ara Ayer travel to Vietnam to report on the long term impacts of Agent Orange/Dioxin on the Vietnamese land and people. This video report was part of their series on New Vietnam.